"More to kill someone for no other reason than to raise a skeleton." No one is actually innocent. He pauses and thinks - "At a guess I'd say - four thousand in paper, or five hundred in gold. Maybe less or more if I'm misremembering how much the Archmage Naimah needs to save a soul. For a skeleton, are you including the value of their work in the cost, or separately from that?"

Responding to Feather: “I think there is some variability in the amount of suffering undead experience.  Careful usage of the right techniques and variants on the standard spells in reanimating animals might render it more as a dull detachment and warped mindset as opposed to active torturous pain.”

Man, Abadarans are creepy. It's not an unreasonable question, but his attitude towards it is rubbing her the wrong way. 

On the other hand, at least he's not claiming that a halfling is the moral equivalent of a blueberry, so he's got one up on the other guy. 

She is completely failing to answer the question in favor of looking horrified at the idea of murdering someone for five hundred gold! Especially when for all you know you might buy souls from Hell that deserve to be there, that seems like the sort of trick a devil would pull.

"I do oppose the creation of undead in full generality. The existence of the Lower Planes may occasion some compromises with Evil, but" mortals are not competent to maintain a compromise with Evil and should generally not do it "it is very easy to call something a beneficial compromise with Evil when it is not. Are these skeletons and the souls trapped within often transported to Nirvana, which would admit them, when they crumble? I suspect not frequently. And cruelty to animals is, I agree, an Evil, and Awakened badgers are most likely done ill by, though I have not interviewed one."

She brought it up! He really doesn't know what she expected.

Oh right the badger issue. Liushna had sort of forgotten about that, but if non-ghost undeath is typically bad, then that situation is a lot worse than she had initially thought! 

Wait. 

"When you said 'help them,' did you mean 'kill them again,'" she asks Feather, because with her new context that would actually make a lot of sense!

Well the archon is a buzzkill.  (If she ever makes Good she’ll make and break a bunch of oaths and minor laws to aim for Elysium).  She’ll exercise discretion before she’s outed as a necromancer.  She can talk to Professor Coeliaris later about her more promising ideas.

"Yes! So their souls stop suffering and can go to afterlives. They have souls now because they're Awakened, and I hope they wouldn't be judged for any Evil they did while undead, because they weren't... really themselves? Do you know?" She asks the archon.

...Liushna does still feel a little weird about re-killing someone without their consent, but...they came into existence as people just before becoming undead, which means they wouldn't have families to want to work to benefit, probably. They might still feel attachment to their animal-badger-kin, but she doesn't know for sure. And even if they did, you can't...tell oral history...to badgers. Well, they're corporeal, they could hunt for them. She doesn't know if they could even find their badger families, though. What a mess.

Estella wonders if only being fully ensouled mortals briefly would give the badgers a better or worse tolerance for the psychological problems of undeath.

"I have not worked in Pharasma's court personally but suspect it could be decided either way. It is not a Lawful court and seems to hold to precedent chiefly as a means of rushing its proceedings. We of the Good planes would of course argue against it; getting any class of Evils done thrown out of evidence is helpful to us."

That's not an encouraging description of Pharasma's court.

Victòria thinks there are lots of Evils that you shouldn't be trying to get thrown out of someone's afterlife trial but probably the archon thinks some of the same things — same confusing things — as the azata. Probably it's fine to throw out Evil someone did while they were a mind-controlled undead, getting mind controlled isn't your fault.

She's just not going to answer is she. Leo will put a mental tally in 'Arguments Won.' This was a gimme but it still counts.

"And on that note, dinner is served!"

Finally, some Free Food!

They sit down, and the Unseen Servants go around, in the new Irrisen style, serving little glasses of a white substance. "The first course is Dire Crab cocktails."

Civilization: take a really big crab and cut it into very tiny pieces, to make it evident most of it is missing. This presumably has some cultural significance? Maybe half the crab goes to feed the poor or something?

There's no cock tail but also no alcohol, so: om nom nom.

How are you even supposed to start a conversation about how the person you're talking to is back from the dead, and also it might be kind of accidentally your fault, and also there are a bunch of strangers here who apparently think murder is fine if it gets you rich.

"What's his name?" she says instead, pointing at the little devilspawn boy.

Oh no. What are you supposed to do when people point at you. Is it bite their finger? It might be bite their finger. Leaaaaaan and - she's not quite close enough.

"I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of food for children-" They seem kind of pointless- "but your child might enjoy the tigerfish soup, which is next? Or the main, which is a whole roast Terrorbird leg?"

To the professor: "He hasn't got all his teeth yet, but the ones he does have are pretty sharp, he doesn't need baby food, but thank you for your consideration." 

To Victoria: "His name is Rojix. The lady at the orphanage had been calling him Roderick, and I didn't want to change it altogether but I also didn't want to give him a name that wouldn't fit in when I brought him home." 

She recognizes tiny-child-attempting-to-bite behavior and gently tugs him back towards her. 

Oh, maybe this was not a biting situation. What ARE you supposed to do with pointing fingers, though. It is a puzzle.

Kicharchu is new to finding places by what their address is but he figures it out eventually! He is an Invited Guest! To a Party! Which has Dinner! In he saunters. "Hello everyone of the party which has dinner!"